Innocent Sailors and Enemy Aliens page 3

It was grotesque the way guy's smile seemed to fall apart in pieces like a brick wall falling down; he could've been someone zapped by a ray gun, even seemed to stagger for a minute. I suppose it was the last thing he expected to hear from a chubby eight or nine year old in that theoretically innocent, post-war, middle-class neighborhood; but then, poor guy, he didn't know Jason.

Finally, the guy turned around and saw Mrs. Farr—Emmy, he'd called her—much closer to him than before and he must've signaled her with his face, because she came nearer and he walked back and they met and talked to one another too low for us to hear. Jason had his plumply scornful expression on, mixed with self-satisfaction at having staggered the guy, but Clipper had gotten bored with the whole business and had wandered over to the front of the garage where the cement parapet threw some shade, and was lying down, licking at herself. I myself was starting to feel the heat on the roof, and the tension of the encounter was distressing me. What after all did I care if Mrs. Farr was having this thing Jason kept calling an affair? I didn't even live behind her or next door. I lived four houses down, and I only knew her to say hello to, like kids knew their older neighbors, and she'd never been mean to me, or kind, for that matter, and I really had no connection with her of any sort, so why should I even be involved in this? I said to Jason, "Why don't we go inside?"

Jason said, "I don't want to."

More than one of our afternoons together had ended with my making a suggestion, and Jason saying he didn't want to, and me going home simply to have my own way in something; and so might this afternoon have ended at that point, had not the guy in the suit and Mrs. Farr herself come up to the fence, now both of them with their heads cranked back.

For the first time, Mrs. Farr did not seem far away. She looked at us about as intimately as I'd ever been looked at by anyone, except my mother and father when they were trying to figure out how sick I was. She had her arms at her middle and was holding on to her elbows, pushing her shoulders up as if she were balancing herself on her palms. "Hello, Jason," she said, a low clarity in her voice, "Hello, Danny."

"Hello, Mrs. Farr," I said. Now I felt almost ashamed of myself, as though I'd been doing something to this woman that I shouldn't have, like the invader from outer space touching the beautiful and helpless Earth girl's face with its tentacles. Possibly Jason felt something similar, because his usual assertiveness was absent when he said, "Hello."

Mrs. Farr said, "Mike says you don't believe he's my brother."

I shook my head, and Jason said, "No." But he didn't add that he thought they were having an affair.

Mrs. Farr laughed, for about half a second, then she said, "Well, you're right. He's not my brother. He's not a secret agent either."

I really didn't want to hear any more, I didn't want to be there, I wished we hadn't seen anything. Next to me, Jason mumbled something that sounded like, ""I knew that," but he didn't repeat it more loudly, and Mrs. Farr didn't ask him to. She said, "But Mike did tell you it would be better if my husband didn't find out he'd come to see me?"

I nodded, and Jason said, "Yes," and this time he managed to put some of his accustomed scorn in his voice, as if reference to the man had mitigated some of the effect of Mrs. Farr's presence, and her voice, which by this time was very low indeed, though still clear.

"Well, Mike is right. It would be better if my husband didn't find that out. Which one of you told him he thought we were having an 'affair'?" Pronouncing affair as if it were a word Jason had invented to describe something Jason had thought up.

I glanced over at Jason. It was a relief to be away from Mrs. Farr's scrutiny, interesting to see Jason's assertiveness and self-satisfaction at about quarter-power. "I did," he said, but not entirely as if he were glad to be identifying himself as the speaker.

"What do you think an affair is, Jason?" said Mrs. Farr, and Jason, now definitely showing off, said, "It's when women have intercourse with men that aren't their husbands."

For just an instant, Mrs. Farr twitched about the eighth part of a smile and shook her head; and the guy in the suit threw his hands out at pocket level like he was scattering coins, and muttered something. I personally found this definition intriguing, but not odd, since Jason and I had discussed the fact that parents "have intercourse" together to create children. Mrs. Farr, however, said very gently, "Then you can see, Jason, why it's important that my husband not find out that Mike was here. Husbands get very hurt and upset when they find out their wives have been having intercourse with another man."

Then I said, "But it's wrong." Meaning particularly that if it was so bad, that husbands got very hurt and upset, it must be wrong for us to conspire with her to keep it a secret.

Mrs. Farr turned that intimate gaze back on me, not saying anything for a minute, and I began to feel as a ship's boy must've felt his first voyage, looking astern and seeing that land had disappeared and wondering if he'd ever find it again. She nodded then and said, "Well, there's lots of thing that are wrong, Danny Silver, lots of things, and some of them can be helped and some of them can't." Now she was far away again, but she came back pretty fast and she said much more briskly. "But maybe you don't have to worry about that yet. I'll tell you what, kids. I'll make you a deal. You promise not to tell anybody that you saw this happen, not your parents, or your friends, and especially not my husband, and I'll promise never to see Mike again. Is that a deal?"

"Emmy!" That was Mike, of course, who reached out a hand and stepped toward her. She, however, simply did a shuffling sidestep and kept her eyes on us. "Is it a deal?"

Certainly it was a deal with me. I was incredibly tired, as if I'd rowed a thousand miles in the heat. All I wanted to do was get off that roof and get away from them. I didn't care about Mrs. Farr that little bit, nor did I care what was right or wrong I didn't even know why I'd said it was wrong and wished I hadn't bothered. But Jason said, "How do we know you'll keep the deal?"

What was his problem? I thought. Just agree and let's get off the roof. Really, at that minute I didn't like Jason Berger one little bit. Mrs. Farr said, about as sadly as I'd ever heard anybody say anything up to that point in my life, "You'll just have to trust me, I guess."

That must've affected Jason as much as it got to me, because he said, "OK."

Mrs. Farr didn't say anything else. She just turned around holding her elbows, and started walking toward the back door; I noticed that she was barefoot and her feet slid across the crew-cut grass. Mike in the blue cord suit walked just behind her and to the left and was talking over her shoulder, waving his hands, though she couldn't see them. She shook her head, shook her head, and never looked back, and when she reached the back door, she opened it, stepped half inside and turned toward Mike, held up one hand in the universal stop sign, and said something which we couldn't possibly hear. Whatever it was, Mike stopped dead in his tracks, his shoulders slumped, and he remained there, shaking his head, while she went inside the house and shut the door.

As much as I wanted to get off the roof, I sat there with Jason, while Mike stood by that door for what seemed like an hour, his head bent as though he were watching a bug on the flagstone path. Then he quarter-turned the top part of his body so that he was peering back up at the two of us, as deeply pained and completely bewildered, I would've said, as a spaceman whose oxygen tube has been cut and he can't for the life of him figure out who could have done it. Then he walked up he path and out of sight.

We got Clipper off the roof pretty quickly. I was overheated and I was dying of thirst and I had to go to the bathroom, but when Jason said, "Are you going to tell?" I stopped in my tracks. "I promised," I said. "You did too."

"I know," he said with a little smirk, "But I had my fingers crossed."

And I said, feeling a bit superior, it's true, but most just passionate and disgusted and afraid for Mrs. Farr, "Oh, Jason, for crying out loud, grow up."

"Me? You didn't even know what an affair was."

"So what?" I said.

"So you don't know anything," he said.

"Yes, I do."

"No, you don't."

This was the start of the most vigorous and satisfying juvenile argument we'd had since we were four years old; after which I went home, though a couple of hours later we got together again and played cards indoors, neither of us referring to what had happened earlier. And in fact, like novice freebooters who had taken part in a notably heinous first raid, we never mentioned it between us again. Of course, I also kept my promise not to tell anyone, and so far as I knew, despite his sophistication, assertiveness, and crossed fingers, Jason never said anything either. But after that morning, Mrs. Farr and I steered clear of one another, the way two frigates that have done considerable mutual damage keep a calculated wary distance. I did everything possible to avoid being in a position where I had to say hello to her, and she seemed to do the same from her side. It was a great relief when she and her husband and her two kids moved away a couple of years later. Probably for her, too.

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